If you run a business that has operations and presence across different geographic locations or planning an overseas expansion, you cannot possibly ignore the need of moving your operations and the infrastructure to the cloud. Spell 'Çloud' and the name that instantly pops up in your mind is 'Amazon web Services'. With over a million active users globally, AWS is undoubtedly the world's most-adopted cloud platform. The smallest start-ups as well as Fortune-500 enterprises, and even governmental bodies use AWS to meet their respective infrastructure needs. Running from dozens of globally dispersed data centers, AWS currently offers through its platform over 200 cloud-based products relating to storage, computing, database, IoT, enterprise applications and more. While some of them are designed to make your organization more agile, some help to save on IT costs. Some services help organizations to scale. Cost-reduction being the primary reason for moving to the cloud, people often start with exploring the most affordable AWS services. However, cost-saving may not be that remarkable unless you choose your services carefully. On the other hand, it's not easy to decide which AWS services to use in your business. Let us begin by briefly explaining how AWS helps you save on your IT infrastructure budget.
What makes AWS cost-effective
Decades ago, organizations had no other option than to build a large data storage space and spend a fortune on their maintenance. Cloud computing changed that by introducing the idea of virtual storage. However, large, and scalable storage comes with a price tag that is beyond reach for most of the companies. If left unused, an extra-large storage space is often a bad investment even for those companies, which can afford it. Too little storage, on the other hand, makes no sense at all.
Besides unused storage space, unused computing capacity also causes firms a huge wastage of resources. For example, companies dealing with fluctuating traffic need to invest in loads of computing power to power their peak-time businesses, while a huge amount remains unused beyond peak times.
AWS helps companies avoid paying for unused storage or computing power, allowing them to pay for just what they use. No upfront cost of building a system foundation, either. Just scale up and down according to your business requirements and the massive infrastructure of AWS will keep on providing you with resources as and when you need it.
Now that you know how AWS enables cost-saving, here is a few examples of some of the AWS services that are not only priced reasonably but also provide several functionalities to ensure long-term savings for your company.
Amazon Lambda
This event-driven service is designed to run code in response to events such as HTTP requests, object modification in S3 bucket, DB table and so on. Besides running your codes, this serverless service also manages the high-availability compute resources. Its pricing model is based on the total number of requests, the time to execute requests and the amount of memory a function takes up. The time is calculated right from the code execution starting time to the code termination time.
S3 Glacier
If you have a type of business that requires to hold on to specific data for either regulatory or business purposes, Glacier provides you with an affordable way to store and archive your cold data. You may not need this data every day. Glacier enables you to retrieve the archived data as and when you need them in return for a nominal storage cost. There are various retrieval plans to choose from.
Amazon CloudFront
Does your business cater to a globally dispersed customer base? This service will help you to deliver content to your global audience, securely and quickly, no matter what your content type is – video, image, data or applications. As a global content delivery network service, CloudFront enables businesses to send data from cloud storage as well as on-premises storage. You may have to pay an additional amount for the second case, though.
Amazon Lightsail
If you are looking for a one-stop solution, then Lightsail is for you. This is an extremely cost-effective Virtual Private Server (VPS) service. It’s a kind of holistic solution that includes computing, storage, and networking lets you initiate just any project on AWS. Based on your requirements, you can choose from several plans.
AWS Cost Explorer
Last but not the least, this service will help you manage your expenditure of multiple AWS services that you are using. This is an Amazon-special tool designed to give you control over all your AWS costs and resource usage. It comes complete with analytics, predictive and reporting capabilities.
With so many options, it really becomes difficult to choose one with confidence. We have discussed some of the affordable AWS services in this article. Before zeroing on just any service, you have to thoroughly weigh the pros and cons of each. First, check if a particular AWS service is available in your region. Make sure that they integrate seamlessly with your existing applications running in a particular AWS region. There are multiple other aspects to consider besides the cost. For example, go through various parameters for choosing the right AWS service for your workload and for your region. A small gap in the estimation can cost you a lot of money. That is why, it's a great idea to get professional help in this matter. We will be happy to hear about your needs in a FREE 30-minute consultation. We can assist you to analyze your requirements and select the best suitable option, accordingly.
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